


things that you want, you'll miss when they're gone

by the merienes tranch (lilhalphys)



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst with a Happy Ending, Canon-Typical Death, Canon-Typical Violence, Character Study, F/F, Gen, M/M, well.
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-29
Updated: 2018-10-05
Packaged: 2019-05-30 03:37:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 5
Words: 9,291
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15088166
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lilhalphys/pseuds/the%20merienes%20tranch
Summary: Lucretia flops down on the bed, wrinkling her nose at the puff of magical sparks that she sends a few inches up into the air. “Taako,” she says, bringing her hands up to rub at her temples, “I’m so gay.”“Oh, mood,” he replies, not bothering to look up from the book he’s reading.-A study on Taako and Lucretia's friendship, as told through a series of fragments and snapshots.





	1. like staying up late, going out late

**Author's Note:**

> youre all probably tired of this format from me. i apologize. sorta. 
> 
> this may seem a bit disjointed; remember that these are snapshots and stuff happens in between them
> 
> fic title and all chapter titles come from "dead bird ii" by mccafferty

I.i

Lucretia flops down on the bed, wrinkling her nose at the puff of magical sparks that she sends a few inches up into the air. “Taako,” she says, bringing her hands up to rub at her temples, “I’m so gay.”

“Oh, mood,” he replies, not bothering to look up from the book he’s reading.

“I mean for your sister.”

Taako snorts. “I figured.” He begins the long, drawn out process of putting his book away that Lucretia has grown accustomed to: running his finger up and down the page a few times, conjuring a bookmark, deciding it isn’t up to snuff, and so on and on. “Your options in the being gay department are kind of limited here on StarBlaster Central, Lucy.”

She moves from her temples to her entire face. “I mean, yes, I suppose, but, I mean-”

He finally settles on a bookmark, unceremoniously shoving it in the book and using Mage Hand to set it somewhere on his dresser. “I  _ approve _ ,” and he sneers as he says it, “if that’s what you’re asking. I know no one back at the Institute could tell before we left, but me and Lup are our own people. She can handle herself if you hurt her, or whatever. Not that you,” and he almost can’t keep going, voice choked out by his bubbly, high pitched laugh, “No offense, Lucy Goosey, but you ain’t the most threatening silhouette.”

She smiles, can’t help it when she talks to him most of the time. “Wow, Taako, thanks for the confidence, dearest friend of mine.”

He starts laughing harder at that. “Okay, okay, I’ll make it up. I’ll help set you two up-”

“-Really? Because, hmm-”

“And by set you two up, I mean literally put the two of you in the same fucking room because Lup and I have already - what?”

She blinks, portraying an ignorance they both know is fake. “What?”

“What were you gonna say?”

“Oh! You mean - I get it!” She grins. “I was going to say that I don’t know how useful romantic advice would be from you because I didn’t think you’d ever been around that block, but then I remembered that that wasn’t the case.”

“Well, it's been a while, no one here on this metal husk can handle the sheer Power of Taako, but-”

Her grin grows wider, and it’s something like checkmate when she says, “So Magnus was lying to me?”

And then they both start laughing, and Taako shrieks out “I take it back! I’m not helping you for shit!” between short, giggly breaths.

 

I. ii.

“This feels like the kind of thing you could just do with magic.”

Lucretia is sitting on a stool - half conjured, half transmuted from Barry’s chair at the dinner table - in front of Taako’s vanity. The table in front of her covered in little glass pots and bottles of powders and creams and liquids, all products of the “patented makeover schooling” Taako had promised her. 

He’s over in the corner of his room right now, shoulder-deep in a Bag of Holding he pulled from a pile of six just like it. “Of course you could do it that way! Lucy, you’re telling the best transmutation wizard to ever live anywhere about Disguise Self. I get it, you’re just as smart as you always are, but, you see,” and he bites his lip for a moment, leans into the bag and gives a little  _ aha!  _ as he finds what he’s looking for - a long, thing applicator brush, “I find this way to be more precise, and I use it to waste time to get out of chores. Not all of us have constant, chronicler-ey obligations to use as excuses, Lue-cre-sha!”

As he walks over to her, she fidgets a bit with the hem of her shirt, feels distinctly the minimal magic precariously keeping her chair together. “Okay, you do have me there, but how is this-”

He presses the brush to her lips, and she laughs a bit at the way it tickles. “Shush. It’s fun to try out new shit with your face. Besides, you gotta make Lup really flustered for this little date of yours or else I can’t support it.”

She laughs, and he starts looking through the pots, biting his lip as he searches for a particular one. “So you can’t just be happy for your sister? You have to embarrass her?”

He laughs in turn, plucking up a small container from the vanity between his thumb and forefinger. “I have to embarrass both of you. Else it's not funny.” The pot he’s holding is full of golden glitter, and with a muttered word under his breath it turns a gentle lavender.

“Hold still, now. You don’t seem like a full face kind of girl, so we’re gonna be simple about it. I want to start with your cheekbones because-”   
  


I. iii.

She’s contemplative, a few weeks later, when she finds herself sitting on another magically amalgamated stool and under Taako’s scrutinous gaze. 

“I feel like this happens too often, Taako.”

He doesn’t answer, quickly looking between her and the canvas in front of him. He moves his whole head as he does, and each time his gaze settles somewhere his grimace deepens. 

She snorts and brings a hand up from her lap to her mouth to hide it. “You look kinda constipated.”

“Fuck, Lucy! I just had it!” He huffs, and the paintbrush in his hand reverts into a bobby pin with a puff of smoke. “I don’t think I’m gonna get any farther with this today.”

She slides down from the stool, careful despite how short it is compared to her height. “Let’s see it then.” By the time she walks around the canvas, the bobby pin is already a pencil, and Taako has the eraser end of it shoved into his mouth. 

The portrait of her looks alright, she thinks, especially considering that this is the first thing he’s ever painted. Only her head  and arms are complete, all connected by vague shapes that are probably supposed to be her torso. The shapes and anatomy are all off, but he’s put all the colors and shadows in the right places. 

She must spend too long looking at it because by the time she turns to jokingly dig at it his posture is completely different. He’s tense, pulled in on himself in a way she hasn’t seen since orientation at the Institute when he wouldn’t let go of Lup’s wrist. Wood splinters between his teeth. She finds herself lost at the sound, unable to form words as she bitterly swallows the realization that she doesn’t know how to deal with honest fear in his eyes. 

The pencil cracks and so does the tension as he says, “Don’t think this is how you teach people painting.”

And she can’t help but follow that escape route. “No, I doubt that. But this is good.”

He huffs, and the pencil is once more a bobby pin that he tucks into his hair. His voice is laced with mockery as he says, “This feels like the kind of thing you could just do with magic.”

And he makes it happen. With a flick of his wrist, the painting’s image shifts, contorts until it’s a picture perfect portrait of her. 

“Yes, of course, but,” she Dispels the illusion, “I personally find it enjoyable. Plus my writing can only get me out of so many chores.”

They both laugh at that, laugh until Taako gets small again.

“You sure it’s alright?”

“Of course. I wouldn’t lie to you, Taako.”

 

I. iv.

It’s been a few years since a civilization has welcomed them so warmly and at least a decade since anyone has held a real party in their honor. Lucretia finds she doesn’t particularly like them, as there’s so much she could be doing instead, but she has learned, over time, how to best spend them.

Having a beautiful, amazing, fun, awesome girlfriend helps, she thinks.

“Said that one out loud too, Lucy.”

She and Lup are standing near a bar, each clutching vibrantly-colored drinks. Despite being dubbed guests of honor, they’re being mostly left alone by the inhabitants of this world.

“I think the people out here just like to drink, probably.”

“Mmm,” Lup hums as she pulls Lucretia closer. She goes willingly, burying her face into Lup’s chest. “Look over there.”

Lucretia follows the length of Lup’s arm, past where she’s gesturing with her drink, until her eyes fall on the dancefloor. 

Front and center are Taako and Magnus. Despite the thrumming beat encouraging action and the occasional request from someone else to dance with them, they stay close to each other. Magnus’ hands are firm on Taako’s shoulders, which shake so badly that Lucretia can see his laughter from even so far away. She watches as Magnus picks him up, spins the two of them around a bit before leaning into a kiss.

“Never seen him this happy,” Lup says so quietly Lucretia isn’t sure she was meant to hear it.


	2. dead angel please wake up safely

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> What was a group of sorcerers based in some attic against the best the Institute of Planar Research and Exploration had to offer?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> those archive warnings? they apply to this chapter!

II. i.

Davenport had been confident that this retrieval would be easy. What was a group of sorcerers based in some attic against the best the Institute of Planar Research and Exploration had to offer?

A lot more than anticipated, Lucretia decides as she struggles to her knees, blood slowly oozing from a magical burn on her stomach and pooling in her mouth. She, Taako, and Magnus had been easily overwhelmed by just the one sorcerer, who’d somehow anticipated their arrival and trapped the door to the place with spells she’d never seen before. Through the ringing in her ears, she can just barely hear Magnus shout as a sickly green blast of force knocks him backwards into the wall. 

A rush of fear followed by a second wind overcomes her, and she jumps to her feet. Her staff creaks as she puts her whole weight on it, righting herself just in time to -

No, no -

The sorcerer looms over Taako, holding in one hand an orb glowing with what can only be the Light of Creation. The contrasted shadows it makes highlight a look of cold fear in Taako’s eyes, or maybe she’s just projecting. She reaches an arm out towards him, feels magic flow down her staff, through her fingertips, but before she can scream, before she can cast anything, the sorcerer points a finger at Taako and flicks his wrist.

The light is coming from inside of Taako, now, and he glows so perfectly for a moment before popping like a balloon, leaving only a pile of dull grey and red dust on the floor where he once lay.

It hurts her throat, her stomach, hurts whatever injuries this fucked up magic has made inside her when she screams, when magic that hasn’t quite coalesced into a spell yet jumps from her fingertips and hits the sorcerer square in the back. He explodes just like Taako did, and, like she’d somehow forgotten in the mere moments since it happened, the reality of Taako’s death overwhelms her once again, and she falls to her knees.

She feels Magnus’ arms envelop her, and it doesn’t make it any easier.

 

II. ii.

He isn’t good at like, dealing with most things. Things that aren’t magic, or cooking, or his sister.

Taako hasn’t held many small children in his life. It was only ever Lup, and even then he was just as small as her when it happened. Lucretia is so small right now, her head-and-a-half she’s got on him useless as she lies prone in his arms. 

“You’re like a little baby right now, Lucy.”

She coughs. Her mouth twitches a bit. 

“Hell yeah,” he says, not looking at her face anymore because she’s too pale, her eyes too dull, “Knew I still had a couple jokes left in me.”

She buries her face deeper into his chest. He can hear her breathing, heavy and rough as she dies, and he wonders how much it hurts. The assassin who’d shot the poisoned dart into her leg sits at the entrance of the cave where Taako’d blasted her dead.

It had taken a good five rounds of Magic Missile to do it, and he hopes the damned woman can still feel every single one of them burn in the Astral Plane.

“Don’t let Lup alone with Barry once you get back.”

He jolts out of his stupor, cursing under his breath as Lucretia winces at the disturbance. “What was that, Luce?”

“When you died - that time she didn’t go with you - she spent the whole rest of the year working with Barry to try and get you back. I did my best, I- I-  I held her close, and I told her you’d be coming back, but-”

“Necromancy is dangerous shit.” Like she doesn’t know.

“-She almost died. I don’t, I, I don’t want her to die because of me.”

He pulls her in closer and pets her hair. She sighs, and her fingers tighten in his cloak infinitesimally. He doesn’t say  _ I’ll keep her safe _ .

“I remember that cycle. Magnus didn’t stop hugging me for like, a week after I came back. Not that I,” and she’s laughing, and it's such a weak sound that it almost kills him, “Not that I’m complaining.”

Her weak little laugh evolves into a cough that is decidedly  _ not  _ weak, and it is just unfathomably unfair. Taako wants to scream, to rip his hair out because it’s all just so fucking impermanent. 

“You wish your significant other was as physically affectionate as mine,” she says, and her tone of voice betrays that she knows how wrong she is. 

Taako wonders if she just wants him to talk for her.

“Uh? No, no no no. No? No. Sure, Lup is always, like, holding your fuckin’ hand or you’re sitting on her lap, or, you see, but - Magnus is like that with  _ everyone _ . Lup just loves you in particular that much.”

“Love her too…”

And that’s the last Taako hears from another person until the wall of the cave is blown in by Davenport three hours later. 

 

II. iii.

Lucretia is not a cleric.

Quite frankly, she wouldn’t even have called herself a wizard before this mission. She didn’t focus on magic until it became a necessity for survival, and she's regretting that she didn’t take Barry’s approach to class pursuit as Taako dies on the ground in front of her. 

“Some stealth mission, huh?” he says, but it's mostly him wheezing and Lucretia reading his lips. The cut is short but deep, running horizontal across the center of Taako’s stomach. It gushes blood leisurely, like it isn’t afraid that she’ll get herself together fast enough to stop it from killing him.

“Nope, no, nuh uh! Come back to me, Luce.” 

Lucretia is not a cleric, but she’s always been a well-studied girl. She knows how to sew up a wound like this. Taako walked her through the transmutation of the grass into needle and thread, so she knows it’ll hold. What she still hasn’t decided is whether stitching up the external damage will do anything for what she can only guess is happening inside him.

“It’s Wednesday. Baking day. Come on, Lucy! You can’t deprive you and the others of my delicious-”

And then he starts gasping, and that aggravated the wound and now there’s blood everywhere-

Lucretia wants to save people. Wants to save her dear friends, wants to save the love of her life, wants to save every single person she meets in every single world that gets destroyed and consumed. That’s why she’s even out on this particular mission, why there’s detailed designs for powerful shield spells sitting right under the painting of the crew, of her family, in her room on the StarBlaster.

Lucretia is a wizard. 

She casts Prestidigitation, and there is suddenly a lot less blood soaking through their clothes and obscuring her view of the wound, which, much to her dismay promptly resumes bleeding.

“I’m already on six, Luce, I don’t wanna-”

She drives the needle into his skin, and it’s grotesquely like using a meat thermometer, just like how Taako taught her, for a moment. She stitches him up, and it isn’t painless for either of them. She keeps needing to cast Prestidigitation to see what she’s doing, and one of them ends up casting Silence when Taako’s screaming gets to be too much. 

But then it’s just over.

The halls of the fortress they’d tried to infiltrate are quiet. They’d been lucky enough to dispatch the few guards that had caught them without drawing any further attention but not without other consequences.

She isn’t sure how they’re going to finish the mission, or even get out of here.

-

Taako is not a martyr. 

No, Taako likes being alive more than he likes a whole lot of other things, including most other people. He’s never found himself able to empathize with dying for another person. Why would anyone give up everything for a someone or a something they won’t even be able to see through? No, that’s quitting for all the wrong reasons to Taako. 

And, yet, he’s still just so, so

“Go on without me,” he breathes into the musty air. 

She fixes him with a horrified look, the crease in her brow showing her disbelief more than any string of words ever could.

“I mean it,” he says. “Get the Light. Save the world. All that shit. It’s what you do, Luce. Besides, I’m not - I won’t -”

“I’m not going anywhere without you.” And she grinds her feet against the stonewrought floor as if to cement herself there.

“Then just wait until I leave, I guess.”

And it’s quiet for a moment. Taako leans into what’s left of his faculties and listens for approaching voices and footsteps. Lucretia takes one of his hands in both of hers.

“Taako, I hate that I have to keep watching-”

“Lup’s older by ten minutes.”

She sputters, almost drops his hand. “What?”

The drafty air almost howls against the vaulted ceilings in the hall, and Taako feels it start to take over the edge of his hearing. “Yeah. Crazy, right? For how much I argue with her about how I’m older. You can’t tell anyone, though, I gotta, gotta keep up fuckin reputations.”

She squeezes his hand tighter. “Why-”

“C’mon Lucy, lemme talk. I got a lotta nice fuckin things to say about ya and not a whole lotta time to say ‘em.”

In that moment, it’s like the air between them flees upwards with the drafts and there’s nothing separating them anymore.

“She was protective - not that you’re shocked by that, huh? She’s the same with you. Sometimes she’d act like she was ten years older rather than ten minutes, and I was so fuckin’ fragile as a kid, guess I needed it. But now, it’s, I,”

He can’t see anymore, and, oh, shit, his whole everything actually hurts a whole hell of a lot.

“Guess you’re like the little sister I never had. I like babying you, teaching you how to do your fuckin makeup and teasing you about your little crushes.”

He laughs, and the both of them are startled by the power, the voice behind it. “Sorry this shit keeps ending up this way. I’m usually more careful than this.”

Taako knows its his last breath when he takes it. “I love you.”

-

Lucretia doesn’t leave her little spot up against the wall until Taako’s hand goes cold.

She stands up and surveys the hall around her. Her breath is strained against the bruised rib she’d almost forgotten she had, but she doesn’t mind.

She needs to save the world.

 

II. iv.

It’s like a shooting star in reverse in the sky, and they are both suddenly quite aware why their ship was named what it was.

Taako and Lucretia stand, arm in arm, in front of a swarm of Hunger shadows. They are unafraid.

It’s two against the whole apocalypse, but that’s twice the odds than if they were by themselves. Even if two by zero is still zero, they can take twice as much hell down with them.

Lucretia throws up a translucent barrier, and Taako’s palms begin to crackle with magical energy.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> THANK YOU ALL SO MUCH for your continued support of this fic. i think im gonna really finish this one


	3. do what's wrong, do what's best, well

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The moonlight makes him forget.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the archive warnings are not as relevant to this chapter! lup's death is referenced, but we all knew that one was coming, right? a character also basically has a panic attack and almost throws up at the very end of the chapter, from "you look positively elven" until the end. not very long, but, hey! stay safe, ok?

III. i.

“A rock? Really?”

Not a lot of natural light finds it way into Lucretia’s room - by design, as everything is with her anymore. The most light comes from Fisher, who stares at her ominously from over Taako’s shoulder.

Bones survive the reset, but Barry always takes them. Fisher is the closest thing she has to a skeleton in her closet.

“Gonna be real honest with you, little Lucy. Didn’t, ah, didn’t really come up with a design for this little guy until, hrm, an hour before I got my little piece of Light.”

The two of them are sitting on Lucretia’s bed, basking in the privacy afforded by the low light as Taako crafts his relic. He tosses the small lump of clay between his hands a few times, eventually settling an amorphous blob in his left hand and carving at it with a little wooden stick transmuted from that little bobby pin he always keeps on him.

She leans over his shoulder. “Whatcha writing?”

He snorts. “I’m- So- Okay. So they have elvish here - of course they do, right? But, like, there’s this special little dialect that we had back home that they don’t got here. So I’m gonna write ‘I’m gay’ on this rock, and some stupid ass arcanist is gonna see it and think ‘oh shit, this is a dope ass ritual carving’ but really? Really, it’s just me putting a little personal touch on this shitty ass rock.”

She watches as he writes, his hand shaking from what is certainly a lack of practice with the shapes of the letters and, also,

Taako isn’t the only one who put off designing his relic until the last moment. They all did, really, because none of them are particularly happy about this. She’s gotten much better at recognizing every subtle sign of fear in his face and posture because that’s all he’d ever let her see, so the lack of subtlety in the way he’s biting his lip raw and curling in on himself is like being dunked in ice water for all the shock.

Fisher bubbles in their tank, and Taako begins to transmute the clay into stone.

Lucretia has a backup plan, if this all goes awry. She stopped being afraid forty five years ago, but she’s always been careful. They’ve all been dying and leaving the ship empty for this entire damn century, but now that they can’t die anymore they’re just turning into ghosts. It’s eating away at her, and she knows that there’s only so much longer this can go before the bond engine jams.

Fisher hums, soft but urgent, and Lucretia stares them down, the two of them the only witnesses as the potential energy for her explosion builds and builds. They - the two of them, her family, and the things they all made - are waiting for her to give up the ghost, let the thrill of kinetic force bursting behind her eyes push her to let a century of seven lives fall through her fingers like sand.

Her concentration is broken as Taako lets out a high, sharp “Fuck!”

She looks from Fisher to him, concern creasing her brow. “What is-”

“I’m not gonna do this again! Guess this is just how it is! Sorry to whoever ends up with this fuckin, little, fuck!”

There’s a moment, she sees, where he almost throws the rock against her bed, but he stops. Flinches. Bites his lip, works it between his teeth.

In the rock is a little divot, shallow and rounded, about the size of Taako’s thumbprint. It wouldn’t be noticeable if not for where it smudged some of the writing, leaving the symbols illegible. She takes the rock from him, and he gives it up easily. It’s heavy and solid in her hand, the ridges where Taako had carved into the clay sharp and sloppy.

“It’s fine,” she says, and she lets it fall against her blankets with a soft thud.

 

III. ii.

Taako doesn’t sleep the night when it happens.

The gentle light of this world’s moon gushes through his uncovered window, leaving his and Magnus’ shared bedroom quite bright. He’s not as homesick as the rest of them - his home came with him on this ship - but he feels it sometimes.

The moonlight makes him forget, and that’s worse than thinking about it all the time, to him. This world and its bright, singular moon are not quite unique, and he finds himself wondering if it’ll set and reveal two suns in a lavender sky.

Guess how that fuckin works out for Taako.

Magnus stirs gently, drool pooling against Taako’s pyjama pants and pulling him from his stupor. He smiles because Magnus is just so unfairly lovable in a way Taako wasn’t sure he’d ever be able to love anyone. His life - all their lives are kind of shit right now, but, and god, this is so fucking stupidly mushy, but Taako thinks he can make it through this so long as he has the rest of these people by his side.

And right as he has that thought, he hears an anguished shout from somewhere in the ship.

Magnus stirs again, and Taako shushes him this time, gingerly pulling himself out of bed without further disturbing him. With a gentle kiss onto Magnus’ forehead, Taako exits the room.

He wanders a bit aimlessly for a moment until he hears the shout again, definitely coming from the common room and definitely Lucretia. His walking gains a purpose as he bitterly wonders if it’s the suffering that has become usual for the seven of them anymore.

Barry beats him there. Taako finds him and Lucretia in the common room, Barry gently cooing at her as she sobs over a piece of paper. In the moment where they don’t see him, Taako almost flees to the safety of his room and Magnus’ arms.

But then Lucretia looks up, and Taako knows what’s happened as soon as he sees the look in her eyes. She doesn’t have to tell him, or show him the damned note - _Back Soon_? what the hell did she even - or whisper “Lup, I,” nearly unintelligible between little hiccups.

Taako falls to his knees and screams loud enough to make up for what Lucretia was holding back.

 

III. iii.

There’s a moment of heartbreaking panic between feeding the journal to Fisher and Magnus kicking down her door where she wonders if it worked.

She’s lost, in that moment. The true weight of her sin collapses around her, kinetic energy fizzling out much quicker than she’d anticipated. She betrayed her family, and for what?

What if they’d all already drank without her knowing? What if only _some_ of them had, forcing her to reveal her betrayal to the others as she restored their memories.

No matter what, surely, her plan had failed. Lup was dead, gone, and her family would fall apart under the pressure of the relics, collapsing into the hole she’d left behind.

And then Magnus bursts into her room.

-

Taako kills a guy. Like, whatever, right? He was literally begging for it, and, besides, he’s done worse to keep himself alive. Taako, alone and against the world, and all that shit.

So then why is he-

 

III. iv.

She picks Sazed for how competitive he is, a decision it would take her years to regret.

In truth, he reminds her of Lup. Not entirely, of course, as surely there isn’t another being alive or dead that could ever emulate her grace, her beauty, her _everything_. But Sazed does have that spark, a certain blossoming charm about him that, perhaps, blinds her a bit to the truth of his ambition.

She never sees any of Taako’s shows.

It’s selfish, she knows. He deserves her support, after everything she's done to him, but she can’t bring herself to ever go. She catches a few of the beginnings and ends, watches Taako set up and pack up from a distance. He’s off a bit, not quite himself in the same ways that Sazed isn’t quite Lup.

It works, Taako moves on, Lucretia is so grateful, and Lucretia is heartbroken.

 

III. v.

“Oh, Lucretia, you look absolutely darling.”

She steps out of the hall and into the foyer where Maureen and her terrible son wait for her. She isn’t particularly looking forward to the night’s ball, another celebration of the Miller family and their accomplishments, but she feels an obligation to support her dearest friend and spend the last night before her first relic hunt having fun, in case it all goes wrong.

Which it won’t because she’s prepared, but she’s never not careful.

“Thank you, Maureen. I hope that I’m not troubling you by tagging along, I-”

“Oh nonsense,” she slings an arm over Lucretia’s shoulders, “we always love to have you, Lucretia.”

-

The ball is exactly as she expects, about as stuffy as parties the Institute had but much less stuffy than anything she attended during the century.

Anything she attended with, with-

She gets several compliments throughout the night. Lucretia knows that, while she is quite human, her features are set in her face slightly differently from those quite like her. Most find it attractive, and, hey, she won’t complain when it gets her free food.

One older woman is absolutely enthralled with her, cooing at her as she sips at the drink in her hand.

“You are just so _stunning_ , dear!”

“Oh, thank you, I-”

“And those cheekbones! You must teach me how you do your makeup; you look positively _elven_!”

-

She doesn’t know how much longer she lasts, only feels the party pass by her in a blur until she’s in one of the venue’s bathroom, crying so hard she nearly loses her dinner of cheese cubes. It’s like choking on nothing and everything, like her guilt somehow took physical form and lodged itself in her throat.

Because of course, right? However many walls she puts up, they get torn down by the unintentional misstep of fate and the rules of the universe. Breathless, and alone in a fucking bathroom, she wonders whether it's her or her family that's the forgetful one.

She decides that it’s poetic as she scrubs at the glitter on her face, her tears helping to wash it all away into the sink.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> THANK you all for your continued support! as always, comments and kudos are greatly appreciated!!


	4. play your cards to your chest

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Her breath leaves her in little puffs, and she watches as they drift up to the ceiling, and she knows that it’s not from the cold.  
> -  
> Taako’s lost.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> SORRY for the (relatively) long wait on this one. ive been very busy recently, and this was on the backburner for a while. we should be back on track to get this thing done in the next few weeks or so!

IV. i

“That sounds like a horrible time, dear,” the male voice says.

“I know I certainly wouldn’t ever want to go through something like that at all, let alone a second time!” his female counterpart echoes.

Lucretia huffs a breath. The room is cold, her skin is cold, everything is just so _cold_. She can feel the way her blood seems to freeze in her veins, in the places where it clings to her robes. Her breath leaves her in little puffs, and she watches as they drift up to the ceiling, and she knows that it’s not from the cold.

“I concur, dear! And I know just the trick to prevent such a thing from ever happening to our poor little contestant again!”

“Oh, do tell!”

The rooms in this place are too small, the walls too cramped for all the thick, black smoke that she has to share the space with. There’s a sensation like a finger under her chin, pulling her face up to meet invisible eyes.

“We’ll just make you forget you ever learned how to doll yourself up like that!”

“Oh, that sounds lovely!”

The chessboard sitting on the table mocks her, its laughter more real than her companion’s desperate voice from behind her.

“Quite frankly, I think we’re doing you a favor. Even if you lose, you come out on top!”

“Unless, of course, you’d rather wager those twenty years instead…”  
  


IV. ii.

The Umbrastaff.

She didn’t pay it much mind during the century, didn’t have much time to. The funny thing is, whenever Lucretia found herself in the same room as that staff, she’d also found herself being kissed silly or having raspberries blown on her cheeks. With the way Lup filled the room when she was around, she often made it difficult to care one bit about an umbrella strapped across her back.   

Once it became apparent that Lup wouldn’t be “back soon” at all, she suddenly couldn’t think of anything but the way the canvas of it folded differently every time she closed it, the way the varnished wooden handle gleamed in the sunlight or from the glow of Lup’s dazzling magic. Anything, really, to distract her from thinking about Lup’s smiling face rotting off her body, her warm heart being cut out of her chest, her-

Perhaps it is wicked irony, or the workings of Istus, or sheer dumb fucking luck, but it is the Umbrastaff she finds herself wistfully drawing when she is called down into her meeting room that day.

And she’s prepared. Of course she is; she coordinated this through Gundren herself. She’s prepared for any outcome, mentally and all that. If one of them dies in Phandalin, or they absolutely all hate each other, or whatever - she can deal. Every scenario is accounted for because Lucretia is nothing if not careful, but, of course, she can only anticipate so much.

She is certainly not prepared for Taako to walk into her chambers with the Umbrastaff slung over his shoulder, but she should be because this really is how her life is, isn’t it. The odds of such a thing are so beyond astronomical, but really, everything is with the twins, with all seven of them. Really, the only outcome that’s less likely is that Taako walks into Lucretia’s chambers with the Umbrastaff slung over his shoulder while Lup is still out there. And, well.

Lucretia excuses herself from the meeting quickly.

  


IV. iii.

Taako’s lost.

It’s been a few days since he watched someone who he was decently friends with, considering the situation, and someone who he was sorta, he supposes, friends with by association die and turn into a tree. And he isn’t coping as well as he’d like to be.

He’s used to death, is the thing! Used to a lot more death than that, than two people whose bitter ends weren’t even his fault at all! Why, pray fucking tell, is he restlessly wandering these damned hallways over something so small!

It’s because of Hurley, he knows. It was something about her, something nebulous and just beyond him, but he got a lot more attached in those - two days? surely it was longer - than he’s gotten to most people in years. It’s scary, it’s an attack on his usual composure in these situations, and it’s horrifyingly familiar.

It’s all so fucking familiar, from the way she laughed to the way the sadness gripped his chest when he realized she wasn’t coming back. And there’s a word for it, he knows. She was like a- to him, she was- like. Like something he never had, surely. Or, wait-

It’s as he’s looking for the damned word for it that he looks up and realizes, damn it, he has no fuckin’ clue where he is.

The hallways are winding, and dark - not that that means anything to him, a cool elf who has lived here for - for a long time.

But they're different. They’re aligned wrong and their ceilings are too high and they, they don’t go the same places.

He calls out to her. She, she always knows what to do. She gets that he gets like this sometimes, gets a little sad, a little tired, a little. Lost.

He calls out to her, but the words don’t come. That’s funny. So funny that he laughs, laughs real hard in the way he doesn’t get to laugh often because most things aren’t funny at all. So funny until he tries it again, and suddenly he doesn’t have the words, but, fuck it! He’s Taako, these people get him enough that he can just scream, and-

“Taako, are you quite alright?”

The Director stands in a nearby doorway, her figure glowing in a magical light radiating from a pendant hanging from her neck. The sheer brightness emphasizes the concerned crease in her brow, the wrinkles that never looked quite right on her face.

Wait - Lucretia should know where she is! The two of them, fuckin inseperable. Kind of adorable.

“I’m fuckin fantastic, Madame! Just, uh, just need a little help with, you see,”

And he reaches for the words. And they don’t come. He starts making frantic gestures with his hands, and with his incoherent sputtering he probably looks like he’s trying to cast some fucking spell to help him find the fucking words for, for-

“I can’t find her.”

“Taako, what are you-”

“She’s gone. I can’t find her anywhere. This place is different, fucking, what happened, and, and I can’t find her anywhere.” He feels tears threaten his eyes, translates his frantic motions into something coherent enough to Prestidigitation them the fuck away. “Where, where is she?”

“Taako, who are you talking about?”

Lucretia’s a bad actor. He knows, surely she’s hiding something! Why wouldn’t Lucretia know where she is?

He starts to feel sick, his knees wobble and start to give, and he falls until his head is cushioned against Lucretia’s chest, and its familiar until it isn’t.

And then he’s unconscious.

-

The piece of paper - which recounts in detail the night’s encounter along with everything else about Lup that she might have forgotten the first time - floats in the baby Voidfish’s tank, and Lucretia hopes Taako is sleeping well.

  


IV. iv.

Lucretia would really quite like to forget the whole experience of Merle and Taako getting the Philosopher’s Stone out of Magnus’ stomach, and it is exactly as she is trying to do so when she notices the way Taako holds the thing.

He’s irreverent about it, of course, tossing and catching it like it didn’t just nearly end the whole world. But as he catches it, it seems to fit into his hand almost too well.

And her eye catches the way his thumb settles in that decade-old little divot, and it’s like being gutted all over again with how he doesn’t even seem to notice.

 

IV. v.

As Director, she is responsible for the upkeep of the Bureau itself. It’s routine. It’s menial. She can deal - she has to, if she’s going to finish what she fucking started.

Her finger traces the “L,” still warm and humming with residual magical energy.

“Uh, Madame Director? What are we doing here?” The woman’s voice shakes as she speaks, and Lucretia almost feels bad. She’s just doing her job, shouldn’t have to deal with her employer’s emotional baggage.

“One of the Reclaimers burned a hole in the wall” is what she had been told. She wasn’t shocked, more surprised at how long it took for those three to cause property damage than anything. She offered to look at it herself, despite knowing that she’d say to fill the damn thing either way. She wasn’t careful, and now she’s paying the price.

The name of the love of her life is carved with magic fire into the wall in front of her, and she wonders why he did it. Surely, he must know. He found the other Voidfish, he drank, he’s going to stop her, or worse, and this whole world is doomed, and

“Madam Dir-”

“Leave it.”

“Ma’am, we need to fix the wall before dinner-”

“Then cover it up or something. Just, just leave it. Please.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you all for sticking with me for this long! i really hope im getting the emotions that im going for across and that youre all enjoying this fic, even if it isnt really happy. at all. it will get better! i promise!


	5. rhymes with things that you'll miss

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lucretia does not weep.  
> -  
> "You fucking took everything from me!"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> waahhhhhh! sorry this one took so long! between school and getting sick and getting into critical role, i have had very little time or motivation to work on this. until just now, when a recent surge of love for taako and lucretia pushed me through the rest of the chapter! im not giving up on this one. dont give up on me. 
> 
> i hope the length/quality of this chapter makes up for the wait!

V. i.

Magnus dies in Wonderland, and Lucretia does not weep.

She wishes she could say it was because she has better things to do, that she truly learned how to grieve so quickly, but really, honestly, she just can’t fully comprehend that he isn’t coming back.

Lucretia does not weep, but she does wonder. She took away what Taako and Magnus had - out of necessity, it really couldn’t be avoided with everything else that had to go - but she wonders if the truth of their awkward, fleeting almost-romance exists in him. She wonders if he’s going to hurt over this loss, never really knowing why.

She wonders, for the first real time, how the hell he’s going to react when he finds out the truth about his lover, his sister, his everything.

 

V. ii.

Taako drinks the ichor of the second Voidfish, and it doesn’t happen all at once.

First it's the name of the ship - the StarBlaster - then teaching Barry how to swim, then Merle’s shitty dancing, then, oh, fuck, everything with Magnus, shit, and all the while he feels something, someone bigger than the rest toeing the line of known and unknown in his mind, and

And then Lucretia.

He’s sitting in his bed, reading a poorly-bound book his aunt gave him, written in a dialect of elvish he’s starting to forget from disuse, when she walks into his room. She saunters over, flopping onto his bed, the drama of it all accentuated by the puff of magic sparkles she sends a few inches into the air.

“Taako,” she says, bringing her hands up to rub at her temples, “I’m so gay.”

“Oh, mood,” he replies, and it’s all so poetic in its simplicity.

“I mean for your-”

And the dam breaks, and it's all too much until he gets his footing, and he finally has the damned words he’s been looking for for twelve fuckin’ years, and she, and she -

 

V. iii.

_ “You fucking took everything from me!” _

 

V. iv.

Lucretia and Taako do not have a legitimate conversation until five months after the Day of Story of Song. 

Being who they are, both to the world as two parts of seven and to their complex web of mutual friends, they see each other often. Lucretia finds it odd, being in the same room with the man she’d consider her best friend and knowing he’d rather speak to anyone else but her.

She’ll wave, and he’ll respond with empty eye contact, so void of recognition that she’ll sometimes clench up, wonder if he really forgot her, whether through some intentional magic or as a side effect of just how much she took from him. Then he’ll notice her fear and smile, and she can never quite tell from the distance he likes to keep whether it's meant to be consolation or mockery.

One evening, on one of the many galas and parties thrown in their honor during the first year after the Day, Lucretia finds herself waiting for Lup to come back with a drink. As is upsettingly almost routine, she catches Taako’s eye across the hall, but the whole thing is off. He doesn’t bother to hide that he knows her or keep his face from settling into a grimace. His posture is reserved in the way Lucretia knows means he really doesn’t see the point in something Lup has asked him to do, especially if it requires any sort of self-sacrifice. There’s a movement behind him, almost imperceptible, as Kravitz nudges his shoulder with an elbow, softly, and whispers something to him. 

Taako sighs and begins the walk across the hall to Lucretia.

She clenches up, feels the desire to run building up in her like steam and stay there, gaining pressure to the point of inevitable explosion as her feet remain glued to the floor.

He’s wearing the tamest thing she’s ever seen on him other than his uniform. A muted purple vest with a matching skirt over a beige shirt - no hat - it almost looks like he’s in mourning. 

He is. They all are, but him especially.

And then he’s too close for her to run away without looking purposeful, without stirring up half-true rumors that she won’t outlive. So she waits until he’s close enough to hear her heartbeat and chaotic inner monologue and opens her mouth to, to say

“Hello, Lucretia,” he says, “You look nice.” And it’s so clunky, so formal compared to the last conversation they had on good and honest terms.

Her hands clench up, of their own accord, and draw  towards her chest. “Ah, yes, hello - same to -”

“Kravitz wanted me to tell you that you’re off the hook for all the times you died. I mean, I don’t think he was gonna reap the lady who saved the whole fuckin’ universe, but, just so you knew.” His posture shifts towards comfort as he speaks and falls into something like one of his usual rhythms; he leans most of his weight on one leg and on the cane he carries now - making up for the destroyed umbrella and injury to his spine in Wonderland - and tosses his meticulously done hair over one shoulder with an arcane flourish.

She almost asks him why Kravitz wouldn’t tell her as such himself until she catches his eye over Taako’s shoulder. He’s biting his knuckle, furiously tapping his foot, and overall looking a whole lot like he doesn’t want her to know that he’s watching this conversation.

“Ah, yes, well, thank you, Taako, I,” she says, gracefully. With each word, the lines in his face deepen, his grimace soon pulled so tight that she can see the very tips of his teeth. And it’s a shock, how familiar disgust is with the way it settles into his features put against the horrible foreign sensation of said disgust being directed at her.

The tension eats at her in her few panicked moments of ramblings so much so that she feels she could burst. So she improvises. 

“You look a bit constipated.”

Taako takes a step back at that, nearly tripping over himself and his cane. His mouth hangs agape as he catches himself, breathes, and Lucretia winces, full body with guilt.

And then Taako starts laughing. Guffawing, really, so much so that heads start to turn their way. He bats away Lucretia’s concerned hand, doubling over his cane.

“Gods, Lucy. Lucy, Lucy, Lucy.” He gives one last gentle pat to her shoulder, bitterness in his face turned semisweet. “Never change,” he says as he walks back towards Kravitz.

He leaves a space in front of her, a void quickly filled by other partygoers milling about and Lup draping herself over her shoulders.

“Is he being a little shit? Want me to deal with it?”

“No, no,” she says, “I think things are getting better.”

 

V. v.

Taako’s drunk.

It’s later, much later, and a much more private party since the last time he got a real good look at Lucretia. And he was a lot less drunk then. 

He remembers when she glowed under the party lights with his sister draped over her shoulders. He remembers going on “double dates” with the two of them and Magnus, illegally loitering under docks, drinking things more sugar than really anything else, laughing not at jokes but because of just how happy he was.

Lucretia’s glittery cheekbones sparkle as they catch the light, and he remembers that too.

He wants to rush her, corner her. Wants to scream in her face and demand apologies for, for everything, for even the stuff she didn’t quite do. Wants to lie and say he knew the whole time, knew she was lying when she first looked at the Umbrastaff and said she hadn’t seen it before, when she found him in the hallways and said she didn’t know who Lup even was.

He wants to hug her. Wants to hold her close and sob into her chest because he’s seen her die too many times to ever really hate her. Wants to tell the truth and say he knew the whole time, that he could never forget her, or Lup, or any of them.

He walks up to her. Touches, more like grabs, tugs on, her shoulder until he has her attention. 

“You,” he says, burps in his mouth a bit, “you stole my thing. With the painting. Low blow, Lucy. Low blow.”

 

V. vi.

She gets a message on her stone, a few months after the first year. From Taako, and left at a time when he certainly knew she wouldn’t be available to answer.

_ Hey, again, Lucretia. _

_ Kravitz and me are gonna get hitched here soon. I thought you’d wanna know. This isn’t a formal invitation, but Lup said you’d be her plus one anyway. It works out, I guess. _

_ I guess I wanted to mention that it all worked out. With me, and, uh, Magnus.  _

_ Not in the way you’re probably thinking. Like I said, I’m happy with Kravitz, and I’m ready to spend the rest of my life - and after? He’s still holding out on promises but I’m sure he’ll be able to get me a sweet afterlife deal - with him.  _

_ It worked out because Magnus was able to find love, and so was ol’ Taako. Which, I suppose, you get some of the credit for, on both accounts.  _

_ You didn’t fuck  _ everything _ up, is what I guess I wanted to say. You came fuckin’ close, that’s for sure, but. Not quite everything.  _

 

V. vii.

As part of what is apparently a growing trend, Lucretia and Lup get married.

When it happens, Lucretia isn’t thinking about what she did to Taako, and, for a few moments haphazardly strewn about the day, she forgets to think about whether she deserves this ending. 

Through a series of spells, they are able to protect the affair from wandering eyes and ears and keep the guest numbers below triple digits. The reception is a soothing affair, really, but Lucretia can feel in her old, aching bones that it’s a formality more than anything. 

She tells Lup this, and Lup says, “This isn’t like before, babe. This doesn’t end when you die. When I said forever earlier, I meant it.” She pinches Lucretia’s cheek, gentle and affectionate. “And I also promise, dear. That’s kinda the whole point of this.”

There’s a ringing sound that resounds throughout the room, then, like a spoon hitting the side of a champagne glass. All eyes in the room fall on Taako, who is very pointedly holding neither a champagne glass nor a spoon, just the gilded wand spinning between his fingers.

His posture straightens as he preens under the attention, and Lucretia watches Kravitz laugh behind his hand.

“Thank you all for your attention!” Taako says with a flourish of his fingers. “I just wanted to take the opportunity to say a few words about tonight’s lovely brides, loathe as I may be to admit that my sister is lovely.” The small crowd of guests laughs as Lucretia meticulously picks apart his expression and words, his posture, looking for some sort of malice or joke at her expense.

She frowns, confused, when she cannot find it.

“Plenty of people have told me, over the centuries that I’ve been alive, that they’re in love with my sister. It’s pretty fuckin’ weird, espcially cause, unless she’s been a dirty liar all these years, no one has ever told her the same about me!”

The crowd laughs again, and Lucretia finds herself able to lean into it more, savor this moment of something like normalcy.

“Perhaps that isn’t too bad though, because a lot of the people who have told me this have been, like, the biggest fuckin’ creepos. They didn’t love her for her, they loved her because they thought elves were delicate enough, that we, specifically, were delicate enough to be controlled. All of them, really, were this fuckin’ evil, until,”

Lucretia feels her sins roar in her ears like The Hunger itself screaming its hell once more. Lup’s hand is solid on her shoulder, in hers.

“Until Lucretia.”

-

Three hours before the wedding, Taako says, “I don’t know how to forgive her.”

And Lup responds, “I think you do.”

And he does.

-

Lucretia has read and written so many books in her long lifetime. Words are a speciality of hers; if she hadn’t been so awkward for so long, perhaps she’d have been a bard. She ate up everything she could, from longform nonfiction to little children’s fables. Often, she found herself indulging in great big novels about heroes, always seeking something. Love, treasure, power,

Redemption.

She’d read about people who’d done horrible, horrible things and then spent years of their lives seeking forgiveness, freedom of guilt,  _ anything  _ to negate what they’d done. She’d watched these people trip over themselves until they’d fallen off of cliffs, and Lucretia and all of her long, skinny limbs and guilty conscience had simply decided to never do anything to necessitate such great, such futile efforts.

Which has certainly worked out well, hasn’t it?

She has walked in the shoes of those heroes for decades, and she is well aware how futile it is to seek redemption. For so long, for so, so long, she was so sure it was because such a thing was impossible. Once you rip someone’s life, someone’s family out from under them you can’t put all the pieces back right, she’d thought.

That isn’t entirely wrong; the pieces of her and her family’s lives haven’t gone back into place, per say, but they’ve found a balance. They’ve filled in the pieces lost to time and weathering with other people, with new experiences and stories to tell. Though they are legends, heroes, perhaps even something like gods, their lives are not the kind of stories where someone can find redemption on a quest over vast lands and through planes of existence.

Redemption finds you, Lucretia thinks as Taako finishes his speech. She was never the one who got to decide whether or not Taako, or anyone, ever forgives her, and she never will be. The only person who she can ever make forgive her is herself, and she can feel in her old bones that she is not quite there. But she senses in the pressure of Lup pulling her into her warm embrace, in Magnus’ jovial shout from across the room, in the way Taako’s chair screeches against the floor as he pulls it back out to sit down, that it’s so, so possible.

 

V. viii.

“Until Lucretia.

She never told me she was in love with Lup, not in so few words, anyway. But it was obvious, the fuckin’ essays she’d write with her mouth in the dark, the hours I’d spend teaching her how to talk to girls - how to woo my sister! - in the, the littlest fuckin’ things she’d say so that I’d know how much she cared, however much or little that love was meant for me

We are all so intimately fuckin familiar with the shit Lucretia has pulled, good or otherwise. You’d be surprised about the shit that didn’t make it into her journals - that I’ve had to fill in the gaps for myself over the past year and a-fuckin’-half - the girl is really quite mischievous once she realizes that whole planar galaxy’s interpretation our lives is dictated by her daily scribblings.

But I’m rambling. What I really wanna say, I guess, is that Lup picked a good one. Of all the people who have been in love with my sister, Lucretia is the brightest, smartest, and certainly most fuckin’ magically gifted. 

So kudos to you both. For your lives, your possible afterlives, and your hella good booze selection. Cheers.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> THANK YOU ALL SO MUCH FOR STICKING WITH ME FOR THIS LONG! it really means a lot to me that so many people have read this fic and...actually liked it? this is, technically, the end! cause all we have left is the epilogue, which im definitely gonna get started this long weekend here and hopefully get uploaded soon!! thank you all so much again for your support, it means more than you can ever know.
> 
> as always, please kudos if you enjoyed it and comment if you can!

**Author's Note:**

> THANK you for reading. i appreciate all kudos and comments dearly...stay tuned for updates!
> 
> EDIT 11/8/2018 - i have decided to call this fic finished for now. i tried writing the epilogue and decided that i felt it took away from the overall impact of the ending, so this is gonna stay where it is for now. if i ever write a followup, itll be a seperate thing


End file.
